Question

Hi how do i retrieve the top level parent of an xml node in actionscript please?

    <companies>
        <company id="1" name="boo" level="1">
            <company id="2" name="hoo" level="2">
                <company id="3" name="ooo" level="3"/>
            </company>
        </company>
    </companies>

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Edit (final):

I think I get what you are asking: what is the company.(@level = 1) node that has the selected company.(@level = 3) as a child. This is also known as an “ancestor” of the selected node. AS3 XML does not have a robust ancestor syntax, so you have to step upwards manually.

For unknown levels of parenting, use a loop like the comments in this post discuss. Note that the following code uses the id attribute for searching. This is because all ids must be unique within a single XML, so you are guaranteed to find the id.

var xml:XML = <companies>
        <company id="1" name="boo" level="1">
            <company id="2" name="hoo" level="2">
                <company id="3" name="ooo" level="3"/>
            </company>
        </company>
        <company id="4" name="boo" level="1">
            <company id="5" name="hoo" level="2">
                <company id="6" name="ooo" level="3"/>
            </company>
        </company>
        <company id="7" name="boo" level="1">
            <company id="8" name="hoo" level="2">
                <company id="9" name="ooo" level="3"/>
            </company>
        </company>
    </companies>

// just for testing:
var selectedNodeXML:XML = 
    <company id="8" name="hoo" level="2" />

var selectedID:String = selectedNodeXML.@id;
trace("selectedID = " + selectedID);

var ancestorID:String = "";

for each( var companyNode:XML in xml.elements("*") )
{
    trace( "searching: " + companyNode.toXMLString() );  
    trace( "res: " + (companyNode..company.(@id == selectedID).@id == selectedID));
    if(
       companyNode.@id == selectedNodeXML.@id
       //|| companyNode.contains(selectedNodeXML) // You can use this if nothing gets messed up . . .
       || companyNode..company.(@id == selectedID).@id == selectedID // . . . but I think this is more reliable.
    ){
        ancestorID = [e-mail]();
        break;
    }
}

trace( "significant ancestor ID: " + ancestorID );